The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

School spending provided one of the starker measures of the difference between North and South. In 1880 the sixteen former slave states spent roughly $12 million on education. The former free states appropriated more than five times as much. In North Carolina the state spent 87 cents per child. Only five states spent $2.00 or more per student to educate their children. Average northern spending per child ranged from a low of $4.65 in Wisconsin to $18.47 in Massachusetts, with only two other states spending below $5.00 per student. The results were predictable. Although the percentage of illiterates in the country fell from 20 percent to 17 percent between 1870 and 1880, the total number rose from 5.7 million to 6.2 million. They were concentrated in the South, which had 65 percent of the country’s illiterates.